


A Place In The World

by FullElven



Category: Machinations - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-06
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-07-29 19:56:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7697491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FullElven/pseuds/FullElven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>*minor spoilers in summary. like...super minor spoilers*</p><p>Total fluff piece. </p><p>Iris Serrah had been assigned to help Samuel in the lab while he recovered from the events at Juneau. She watches the way he looks at Rhona, and finds herself longing to be the one he looks at like that. Nervous and unsure of herself, she can barely get herself to call him by name, let alone start a conversation with him...how could she ever even hope for a friendship, let alone more?</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Place In The World

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not going to lie, I've dubbed Macy Grey's "I Try" as like...my Samuel/Iris song. Samris? Iruel? Whatever. Anyway, I listened to it on repeat the whole time I wrote this, so if you're wondering what it's like in Iris's head when she thinks of Samuel, take a trip to Youtube, and give yourself a listen.

I can’t help but to watch them out of the corner of my eye. It’s impossible to miss the way he comes to life when she walks into the room. Wait…that’s unfair… _everyone_ comes alive when Rhona walks into a room. _I_ …come to life when the Commander walks into the room, and that’s simply the kind of person she is. You just can’t help but to get caught into her gravity, swept away by whatever cosmic fairy dust the gods decided to gift her at birth.

 

It’s different with Samuel.

 

For him, every time she holds his gaze, _he_ holds his breath. Her smile tugs at the corners of his lips like they were attached by strings. It would be wrong to call her a puppet master when it comes to him, because even though I don’t know the depths of their friendship…there’s no politics there. She doesn’t play him, at least, not for the wrong reasons. A carefully placed witty reply here or there to get that smile from him again, to cheer him up, to instill something he needs, but that is it. His will is his own. His actions are his own. His words…are his own.

 

But his heart is hers.

 

Rhona looks my way, and I hurriedly get back to the files that I’m putting away for Samuel while his arm is still in his sling. My glasses have fallen down my tanned nose, but I don’t bother pushing them up, wishing that I could somehow make my 5-foot-8 self…smaller.

 

What if she somehow knows that while she holds his heart in her hands, he can’t even see mine that I’ve left hemorrhaging over the papers on his desk. The way _my_ smile is dependent upon his? That the reason I can survive beneath the ground for months on end without fresh air, without the sky…is because his presence is my night sky, his voice the dancing Aurora…

 

“Are you alright, Iris? You’re looking a bit flushed.” He asks me, and suddenly I realize his shadow has blotted out the light from behind me, that he’s there, concerned, for _me_ and I’ve somehow been crouched here, frozen in some sort of mental temporal stasis, paralyzed by my longing.

 

“I-I’m fine. S-sorry, I got distracted, it won’t happen again, sir.” I find myself whispering, barely loud enough to hear.

 

But they’re both watching me, and it’s deathly silent in the lab. _Gods…does he know? Did she tell him? Am I sweating? Oh, I hope I don’t smell of nervous sweat…_ The thoughts just pile in my head, and as the final file I had been carrying is put away in it’s place, I find myself fiddling with the pewter pentacle around my neck.

 

“I’m no sir,” he begins to remind me, his tone soft, friendly, inviting. I can hear the amused smile in his tone, and it takes me a moment to realize I put it there. Though by accident, I can’t ever find it in me to speak his name, but somehow…my insistence in calling him sir when he isn’t even an officer of any kind…seems to entertain him some.

 

“I-I’m fine. Really. I-I just have this last stack, and I’ll get out of your way. Um…if there’s nothing else.” I stammered.

 

“If you’re ill—“ He starts again, but she stops him with a simple call of his name.

 

I don’t blame her. Not really. I can no more blame her for the way she can draw him away like a siren, than I can blame a candle flame for the way it dances for the moth. They’re just drawn to one another in a way I don’t possess within my lanky, awkward form, and it’s something that I had accepted so long ago.

 

“Iris?” My name leaves his lips once again, and I find myself tripping and having to catch myself on an examination table.

 

“Y-yes, sir…er… _S-Samuel_?” I asked, turning to him, so anxious I can practically hear the very fiber of my faded black-camo BDUs moving against one another.

 

He smiles, and my face flushes hot, like I was suddenly illuminated by the sun after a Midwestern midday storm. “Would you like to join us for a bite when we’re finished here?” He offers, a tone to his voice that I’ve not heard before. Not toward me. Was…that _shyness_?

 

Surely not.

 

“I don’t want to impose…” I begin, but in seeing the sides of that smile begin to fall, I rush to catch them with a blanket of words. “…but I’d love to eat with you.” It comes out in a rush, and I only pray to whatever gods that are left that I was fast enough.

 

There it is. A little more reserved, but not as if it were forced. It reminds me of the child that hides behind their mother’s apron when presented with welcoming a new person.

 

Not a new person. _Me_.

 

Rhona says something, I’m sure it’s witty, because he laughs, and I laugh…like that, the tension released. I’d only wish I could have actually heard it over the rush of blood between my ears, my heart racing. I turn around to begin filing away the last of the day’s work, imagining what it could be like one day to have our smiles depend on one another, to know what it would feel like to have his heart beat beneath my fingertips, to laugh at my nerdy, albeit really terrible, jokes.

 

But he’d invited me to lunch. Maybe not a private, romantic lunch beneath the stars….yet it’s a start. It gives me hope. My lovesick heart yearns for even the thinnest of threads to tie to him. A friend. Would it be so bad? My heart aches to see the way he looks at her, but at the same time, it flutters in knowing that he _can_ feel those things. That _someone_ is making his heart swell the way mine does.

 

If he can keep afloat at drift in the sea of unrequited feelings, I can too.

 

Files are put away, lights flicked off, and though I let them hold the bulk of the conversation on the way to the cafeteria, I allow that wall I put up to segregate myself from everyone else to crumble just a bit. As the conversation switches to Star Wars, I test the waters, test my place in this social hierarchy, dropping a breadcrumb of my obscure Mandalorian Wars knowledge.

 

And as he rises to take the bait, I realize maybe it’s not as hopeless as I think.

 


End file.
